


Ghosts

by babel



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-13 12:20:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babel/pseuds/babel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jay and Tim's encounter in Entry 53 ended differently, and Tim's life continued from there...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

It's been three years since the last time Tim woke up not knowing where he was, three years since he lost full days to blackouts. The last time was when that one guy from the student film Brian dragged him into showed up out of nowhere and started asking him questions. Tim had talked to him a little, but when the guy started talking about that film, something had made Tim feel sick.

He lost two weeks that time. He woke up in the middle of the forest, with something dark brown and crusty under his fingernails and a camera in the dirt next to him.

It was only a few months later that he ran into Sarah again, and they hit it off again, like they'd never lost contact with each other. She's the one who keeps him stable now. She keeps him sane, makes sure he takes his meds, makes sure he goes to his sessions. They don't talk about the first time they met. They don't talk about the movie guy, or the movie guy's friend, or Brian, and he never asks if _she_ remembers where Brian went or how they all fell out of contact with each other.

_Stay in the present,_ his doctor says. And he does.

* * *

They rent an apartment with two bedrooms, one for them and one for the three cats she accumulated in the two years they've been married.

Sarah can't turn away a stray, Tim will say to their friends, laughing with them because they all know that she'd never keep someone like him around otherwise.

* * *

"Hey, Tim, what's this? It was in the back of the closet." Sarah lifts up the old plastic bag. It's spring, and she's fixated on cleaning every corner of the apartment.

Tim just glances at her in the mirror and shrugs. He's shaving, getting ready for work. "I guess you can throw it out."

She sets the bag on the counter next to him and starts to pick at the knot that ties it closed. "I can't just throw it out if you don't know what it is." She gets frustrated and just tears the bag open. She pulls out a tape and looks at it. "Tapes? You can't just throw out tapes."

"Oh." Tim splashes his face with water, then shrugs again.

"There was a camera in there too. Do you think it'd play tapes like this?"

Tim turns to her, water still dripping from his chin. "I have to go to work," he says, but he doesn't leave.

* * *

Tim wakes up on the kitchen floor. Black footprints. The first thing he sees are black footprints starting from the front door. Thick, black mud.

His head aches.

He pulls himself up to his feet. One of Sarah's cats, the white one with a missing eye that she calls Casper, is laying on the kitchen counter twitching his tail. There's some kind of filth in his fur, a streaked hand print where someone petted him. More mud, or is it something else?

He finds his phone in his pocket. Six weeks. He's lost six weeks. And Casper keeps glaring at him with that one ice blue eye and that stuff in his fur looks more brownish-red than black.

There's a message on his phone. He closes his eyes as the robotic voice states "One new message from... _Sarah_."

Whispering. Not Sarah's voice, too low. Muffled by something, so it's almost impossible to hear at first until finally, _\--the present. Stay in the present. Stay in the pres--_ It's raspy, but Tim knows it's his own voice. He doesn't remember making this call, he doesn't remember using Sarah's phone, but he knows it's his own voice.

_Stay in the present,_ the voice keeps whispering. There are other voices in the background, a strange scraping noise, and there's coughing. The coughing won't stop. It won't stop. Until, suddenly, it does, and the voices and the scraping stop too.

Silence, and then someone else picks up the phone and says, _Better luck next time, Tim._

* * *

Tim drives. Casper is in the passenger seat next to an empty pill bottle that he hasn't bothered to get refilled.

"Stay in the present," Tim mutters to himself as Casper licks the last flakes of brownish red out of his clean, white fur.


End file.
